Lots of Christmas Movies at the Library

Each week, Shrewsbury Patch features new books, movies and music available through the .

Here are a few of this week’s new items:

• Disneynature: Oceans, from Walt Disney Studios. "After taking on insects for Microcosmos and birds for Winged Migration, French filmmaker Jacques Perrin segues to sea creatures for Oceans. Codirected by Jacques Cluzaud, Disneynature's follow-up to Earth presents useful information but concentrates more on awe-inspiring imagery than scene-setting text."

• Disneynature: African Cats (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging), from Walt Disney Studios. " ... astonishing in its intimacy as it examines the lives of two lion prides and a determined cheetah single mom, and how their lives intertwine on the Serengeti. African Cats is warmly narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, who bestows just enough identifiable emotions onto the film's subjects to be extra engaging."

• Miracle on 34th Street (Special Edition), from 20th Century Fox. "The original 1947 version of this Valentine Davies story follows the misadventures of Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) as he gets a job playing Santa Claus at Macy's department store in New York City. Natalie Wood is the little girl who tells him she doesn't believe in Santa, and Maureen O'Hara and John Payne are the couple who help Kris through a trial in which he must prove he's the jolly fellow from the North Pole."

• One Day, from Universal. "Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) meet on July 15, 1988, the night of their graduation from the University of Edinburgh--and the movie One Day returns to them on that day every year for the next two decades, following the giddy ups and painful downs of a friendship that hopes and fears to become something more."

• Scrooged, from Paramount Pictures. "Most critics couldn't get behind Bill Murray's modern retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, finding it too unfocused at times and not nearly wicked enough. Still, if you're a Murray fan, you have to enjoy his deliciously nasty portrayal of the world's meanest TV executive, who has his cathartic moment one cold Christmas night in New York City."

• This Christmas, from Sony Pictures. "This year Christmas with the Whitfields promises to be one they will never forget. All the siblings have come home for the first time in years and they've brought plenty of baggage with them."

• Miracle on 34th Street, from 20th Century Fox. "Based on the 1947 holiday classic, this new Miracle sticks close to the original's story, though it offers more contemporary, crisper pacing and a tone  curiously more reflective--even sorrowful--than before."

• Prancer, from MGM. "This 1989 family film stars Rebecca Harrell as  9-year-old Jessica, a motherless schoolgirl raised (and largely ignored) by her bereaved and embittered father (Sam Elliot), an apple farmer. While Jessica's dad struggles to keep food on the family table, the little heroine worries over the fate of a wounded reindeer she  meets and wistfully identifies as a member of Santa's sled crew."

• Prancer Returns, from USA Home Entertainment. "In this sequel to the successful release Prancer, 8-year-old Charlie Hooper finds a baby reindeer in the woods that he believes is the beloved Prancer."

• The Help, from Touchstone. "There are male viewers who will enjoy The Help, but Mississippi native Tate Taylor aims his adaptation squarely at the female readers who made Kathryn Stockett's novel a bestseller. If the multi-character narrative revolves around race relations in the Kennedy-era South, the perspective belongs to the women. Veteran maid Aibileen (Doubt's Viola Davis in an Oscar-worthy performance) provides the heartfelt narration that brackets the story. A widow devastated by the death of her son, she takes pride in the 17 children she has helped to raise, but she's hardly fulfilled."

Information courtesy of Wowbrary.